


Karigan's Bad Day

by athersgeo



Series: The Sacoridian Snippets [2]
Category: Green Rider Series - Kristen Britain
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-11
Updated: 2014-12-11
Packaged: 2018-03-01 02:41:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2756537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athersgeo/pseuds/athersgeo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karigan doesn't think it's funny. Zachary disagrees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Karigan's Bad Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [raktajinos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raktajinos/gifts).



> Set a slightly non-specific time after Blackveil/Mirror Sight, when the dust's finally settled.

When Zachary found her, Karigan was sitting in the middle of a particularly muddy puddle on the parade ground and looking as if she might just slay the next person who spoke to her. Not one to shy away from a challenge, Zachary came to lean against the fence.

"Go away." From the tone, Karigan meant those two words whole heartedly.

Zachary offered up just a touch of amusement. "Is that any way to speak to your king?"

"Go away, sire."

Zachary's amusement grew. Karigan was clearly in a considerable bait. Feeling reasonably safe at this distance, he asked, "Why?"

She glowered. "I'm having a bad day."

The king bit his lip in an attempt to keep his face straight. "I see no dead bodies around you; this leads me to conclude that no-one has attempted to kill you recently. I see no ghosts, no wraiths and no Eletians. Mornhavon the Black is – thankfully – an extremely bad memory once again and I know that Arms Master Drent is currently laid up in the Menders' wing with an acute head cold." The king's straight face wavered at this; Drent was terrifying, even from his sickbed. "I also know that while you have new recruits, none of them are particularly designed to try your patience. All things considered, this doesn't seem like a day you should be calling 'bad'."

If Karigan's looks could kill, Zachary judged he should have been meeting his ancestors. Fortunately – and as far as he was aware – no Rider had that particular talent, least of all Karigan.

"So what has happened to make this day worse than a day spent teaching Mender Ben to ride a horse—" she shuddered, despite herself, "—or the battle of Lost Lake, or facing Blackveil, or—"

"All right, all right." Karigan sighed, her anger deflating as she did so. "I suppose it hasn't been that bad."

"I'm glad to hear it." Judging it finally safe to approach, Zachary stepped around the end of the fence and offered her a hand up, out of the puddle. "So what is it that's had you so upset?"

There was a moments pause while she availed herself of his aid to get back to her feet, and then she sighed again. "You'll think it silly."

Zachary chuckled. "That I doubt; you're not prone to melodramatics."

Now that her temper was calming, Karigan chuckled ruefully. "You may rethink that statement." Zachary merely looked at her patiently until she finally admitted, "It started with breakfast."

Zachary blinked. Breakfast had been nearly five hours ago. "I didn't notice anything untoward."

"It was after you'd been summoned."

"Ah." And here Zachary had the first hint of what had so upset Karigan. "You knew that my being summoned from the meal table was always a likely event. If you recall, you've been the reason for such a summons on more than one occasion."

"I know. And that isn't what bothered me." She gave him a fond, if slightly exasperated look. "Allow me a little credit, sire."

"Such a talent for insult when being outwardly polite really is to be marvelled at." Zachary started to lead the way back towards the castle. "So if not my sudden departure, what then?"

"I was summoned," Karigan answered, "by on of the Green Foot, to attend the stables."

Zachary stopped and turned to Karigan. "So far, this sounds like a normal morning for the Captain of the Green Riders."

She harrumphed with disgust. "It's not a normal morning for the Captain of the Green Riders when she finds she has to deal with a new recruit who appears to be attempting to break the record for sheer stupidity." She raised a hand. "And do not tell me that Captain Mapstone had to deal with me and my...eccentricities. Most of the trouble I found myself in wasn't of my making."

Zachary pursed his lips together in an effort not to laugh. "I'm glad you said 'most'," was all he offered.

She harrumphed again. "I never managed to fall out of the hayloft and give myself a concussion."

"No – and you did sleep in there for a number of nights, as I recall." Zachary stroked his chin. "So which of your recruits was it?"

"Kant, from Adolind. He'd come round by the time I got there, so I was able to find out what had happened. It turned out he'd come out early to see to his horse--"

"A good trait to develop, accidents allowing."

"True, but it also turns out that he suffers hay fever."

Zachary winced. "Oh dear."

"He went up into the loft for some fresh hay, his eyes swelled up and the next thing he knew, he was taking a dive down the ladder." There was sympathy in Karigan's voice, but her expression clearly suggested her rider recruit was an idiot for having attempted the hayloft in the first place. "I took him up to the mender's wing myself and left him with Ben. That was when Drent found me."

"He has a head cold."

"And you think that stops him?" Karigan asked.

Zachary judged the question entirely rhetorical.

"He informed me, between sneezes, that Master Gresia would see me at my usual time and that I'd better not show him up." No sympathy to Karigan's voice now, just pure disgust. "As if I would."

"I'm sure Drent knows you wouldn't," said Zachary soothingly.

Karigan snorted and started stalking towards the castle at a rate of knots. Zachary had to hurry to catch up. When he did, he put his hand on her arm to slow her flight. She glared at the touch.

"Don't go inside just yet; as soon as we do, we both have to resume our roles," he pointed out. "And you won't be able to finish your rant until dinner – and I'm not sure the petitioners will appreciate that."

Karigan gave him a sour look at the reminder, but did slow her steps.

"So," Zachary prompted. "I refuse to believe that you of all people consider that enough to term this a bad day. Something else has to have occurred. Training with Master Gresia perhaps?"

"Drent's latest idea," said Karigan, "is that after all I've seen and done, the best way for me to practice is for me to teach. Drent gives me Weapon Initiates to work with, but they were all elsewhere today, which left me with Master Gresia's beginners."

Zachary shuddered. "Tell me nobody was stabbed."

"No stabbings, but a couple of black eyes and a number of broken fingers. None of them caused by me," she hastened to add. "Another of the Rider Recruits, who, frankly, has all the coordination of a drunken Groundmite."

That was an image Zachary tried hard not to think about.

"I will say," she continued, "that at least Rider Essien is enthusiastic. The other recruit training this morning was not. She complained solidly for the entire session about what the training was doing to her fingernails."

Zachary winced. "Oh dear."

"Captain Mapstone would have chewed her up one side of the castle wall and down the other."

"You, obviously, did not do that."

"No – though I was sorely tempted. I've paired her with Kant – for the next six weeks, she has to help him with his horse care."

"Won't she complain about that, too?"

"I've also threatened her with Drent," Karigan finished, an evil smile now gracing her face.

"She is that talented?"

"Oh yes; Master Greshia was already thinking about asking Drent to take a look at her for further training."

"So she may adjust her attitude and still end up with the punishment."

"She might – but if she's adjusted her attitude, she'll understand it's not a punishment."

Zachary coughed into his hand to try and disguise a snort that was entirely too close to a laugh. "And how long did it take before you saw that?"

Karigan gave him a half-hearted glare.

They were almost at the Castle door now. Zachary could see Fastion watching from the doorway. That was the advantage to having your intended be a fully trained and qualified Weapon in her own right – the rest of the Weapons tended to back off further than they otherwise might when they were together.

"It must be almost time for the afternoon Audience to begin," said Karigan. "I should go and change."

"You should, but nothing you've told me is the real reason for your bad day," said Zachary knowingly. "So, out with it. What else occurred?"

She sighed. "I had just finished training and returned to the Rider Wing to get changed when the Wedding Committee arrived."

"Wedding Committee?"

"Cummings, the royal dress maker, three ladies in waiting who have appointed themselves arbiters of taste and decorum, my aunts, and at least thirty hangers on."

Zachary stared with unmitigated horror. "That was this morning?"

"It was," Karigan agreed. "They accepted your absence with grace – you are, they said, the King and you shouldn't, they said, be troubled by such things as whether or not the table cloths should match G'ladheon colours or Hillander colours. I, being a mere Rider Captain and a woman to boot, was a perfectly acceptable target however." She grimaced at the memory. "I do not see why this wedding must turn into such a—a—a circus!"

"Some of that, I fear, is my fault."

"Your fault?"

Zachary felt sheepish. "I may have said to Cummings that I wanted this to be a memorable event."

Karigan stopped dead. "Why, by the Gods, would you say such a thing?"

The outrage and incredulity in her outburst made Zachary's sheepishness fade to amused exasperation. "I hope you'll forgive me for wishing to have an event to remember this time – I most sincerely hope to be conscious for this wedding."

Karigan's ire evaporated in an instant at the reminder, however oblique, of Estora. "I will. I do. I mean—" She sighed. "I'm just not the sort of woman who enjoys endless hours discussing the finer differences between damask and linen table cloths."

He snorted. "I can't imagine any sane woman enjoys that sort of discussion."

"My aunts," said Karigan darkly.

"You do realise that as my betrothed you have the power to end such meetings?"

"I repeat: they're my aunts," she said. "It doesn't matter what I've done, where I've been or who I'm marrying; as far as they're concerned, I'm still their little niece."

"There," said Zachary, "I do genuinely sympathise. Laren could be a little like that with me."

From the expression on Karigan's face, Zachary suspected she was having some difficulty equating the former Rider Captain with her aunts.

"Anyway, memorable or not," he continued, "you know as well as I do that this wedding is not for us. The circus, as you call it, is for the people of Sacoridia. They need it. They need the—the joy and the frivolity after everything this country has been through in the past ten years."

Karigan turned grace. "I know. And that is the only reason I refrained from having the whole boiling lot of them thrown out – that, and I didn't have thirty or so Weapons or well armed Riders at my disposal."

Zachary snorted again. Even Fastion's mouth twitched, just once. "Your aunts are not that bad."

"They are when combined with a royal dressmaker who isn't too choosy about where her pins are stuck."

Zachary winced. "Yes," he mused, "that does constitute a normal person's poor day – though I'm still not certain how it rates as a bad day on your scale."

"Did I mention that lace makes me itch?"

Zachary stroked his chin, his hand hiding the fact that he could no longer keep from grinning. "And none of that explains just why I found you sitting in that puddle."

Oddly, that made Karigan blush and she said nothing.

Sensing a story, Zachary turned to her as they finally reached the doorway Faustion was guarding. "Out with it. What happened?"

"I was so frustrated with being poked and prodded that I decided I would go out for a quick hack around the grounds, but since my training session this morning, it had rained and I was walking too fast and I...skidded in the mud and...well..."

"She went headlong, your Majesty," Fastion contributed. In a contemplative tone he added, "It was a quite spectacular dive."

Karigan glowered at the Weapon. "I thought we'd come to an arrangement: you wouldn't follow me around like a black sheep and I wouldn't stray off the castle grounds without notifying you."

Fastion didn't flinch, Zachary decided, but he may have taken just a fraction of a step backwards and his hands automatically rose in defence. "No following involved, Sister-at-Arms – at least, not of you."

Karigan didn't look remotely mollified by this.

"How did I not notice this?" Zachary enquired, knowing that Fastion had been attending him all morning.

"You were deep in discussion with Lord Mirwell, Sire."

"Ah." Zachary nodded. "And now I know how you knew where she'd be."

Fastion bowed his head in a nod.

Karigan's expression still suggested that Fastion should consider looking over his shoulder for the rest of the day. Particularly since Zachary knew that some of the Riders' more accomplished practical jokers were currently in residence and they were all protective of their newly promoted Captain.

"Yes," Zachary mused. "Definitely a bad day. Maybe even one worth of you – and I wish that I could tell you it will be better from here on, but—"

"But this afternoon is a public Audience which means we both have to spend all afternoon adjudicating over matters of stolen livestock and cheating merchants," Karigan finished.

"It could be worse," said Zachary.

"How?"

"It could be an afternoon without a public Audience, leaving us both fair game to your aunts, and that really would be a bad day by anyone's standards."

Karigan stared for a moment. "Sire, you have introduced me to a genuinely new concept."

"And what is that?"

"Being grateful for petty squabbles and minor crimes."

Helpless to do anything else, Zachary laughed.


End file.
